Belarus

A landlocked eastern European country bordered by Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, Belarus is a former Soviet republic that declared its independence in 1990. The country's economy remains state-controlled, and depends on trade with Russia and the European Union. The second half of the 2000s saw an industrial boom in Belarus after a slump following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Drug trafficking and domestic drug abuse have become more serious problems in recent years.

There is little reliable hard data on drug use in Belarus, a topic that does not seem to have even been surveyed for published reports until 2007. At that time, a survey supported by the United Nations found that 58.7 percent of Belarusian young people had smoked tobacco, 16 percent ...